


city of love

by erythea



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Banter, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, please imagine the adult andersen please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27173536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erythea/pseuds/erythea
Summary: Hans Christian Andersen and The Count of Monte Cristo tour modern-day Paris. Someone's plans are foiled, and someone takes a hint.“Paris remains the city of cities!” Hans Christian Andersen declared for the fifth time since their arrival.No matter how much the Count of Monte Cristo tried to squint past the radio towers and glass pyramids, he couldn’t see Andersen’s version of Paris. He was still getting used to the sight of chromed cars against chestnut trees. The antiquated beauty of the metropolis was now dotted with buildings and facades that were flatter, more angular, and less familiar than his last visit. Perhaps it suited the city just as well — after destruction of the source of his anguish, being in Paris should be much simpler.Being a Servant, however, was not.
Relationships: Hans Christian Andersen | Caster/Edmond Dantès | Avenger
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	city of love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gon (pepperedfox)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperedfox/gifts).



> Commission for Jay! They asked for 2k words of Dantes/Andersen confessing in modern-day Paris but it turned into this. If you're interested, please check their Dantes/Andersen fics out! [Beyond Love and Hate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314358) is a good place to start, and I recommend reading it before reading this one to get a feel of their dynamic, though it's not necessary.

“Paris remains the city of cities!” Hans Christian Andersen declared for the fifth time since their arrival.

No matter how much the Count of Monte Cristo tried to squint past the radio towers and glass pyramids, he couldn’t see Andersen’s version of Paris. He was still getting used to the sight of chromed cars against chestnut trees. The antiquated beauty of the metropolis was now dotted with buildings and facades that were flatter, more angular, and less familiar than his last visit. Perhaps it suited the city just as well — after destruction of the source of his anguish, being in Paris should be much simpler.

Being a Servant, however, was not.

The Count of Monte Cristo was frozen in time, still burning and burning still, the icy flames of vengeance enveloping him in agony and rage and hate, hate, hate. Everything about him was just how Chateau d’If left it, and Paris only served as a reminder of the things he can’t change. Noirtier’s address wasn’t too far from here. If that letter reached him through some other means, would things have been different? Thinking about it set his blood on fire, the anger with no escape from his veins, from the Spirit Origin of this existence called Avenger. It was the past that gave shape to specters like him — as much as he wanted to escape it.

Monte Cristo balled his gloved hands into tight fists. Escape! How foolish. If he was going to pity himself in the middle of a tour, he ought to keep to himself. No one deserved his flames, least of all his companion.

Even if his companion asked for them constantly.

There was a new minor singularity in 21st century Paris, and the Count of Monte Cristo was naturally selected for the mission. Ritsuka considered the count’s familiarity with the terrain an advantage for Chaldea. The count. On the other end of the spectrum, Hans Christian Andersen did not so much wait to be picked as he did floridly beg for his Master to rely on his support. Monte Cristo had never seen the author look so pathetic, but that might have been because Shakespeare wasn’t in the control room. No act could hide the truth from the count — he knew Andersen wanted to go to Paris. France was, after all, a country of possibilities.

Once the team arrived, Ritsuka and Da Vinci fitted the accompanying Servants with the appropriate clothes to blend in, and they finished the mission swiftly. Monte Cristo found the black peacoat over his turtleneck sweater agreeable, if not rather stylish, and mentally considered the many ways he could do future battles without paying mind to the length and weight of his cloak. But fashion didn't improve his mood so much as seeing Andersen.

Andersen looked interesting. He was an oversized jacket on spindly legs, walking down the Rue Vivienne with an unusual spring in his step. Monte Cristo surmised that the shopping arcade they just left lifted the author’s spirits, but he’s been in a particularly good mood since landing on the right side of the Seine. Monte Cristo couldn't see why. They haven't even been to the Champs-Elysées. Then again, the avenue had also changed in ways the count was uncertain he was ready for. In Paris, Napoleon's arch triumphed, and so did Andersen’s whims as he strode off to their next destination.

“The city of cities!” he repeated. It was his sixth. “Copenhagen  _ wishes  _ it were Paris!”

Paris didn’t have a statue of the Little Mermaid, but Monte Cristo supposed Andersen was looking for more than tributes and platitudes. The city went by many epithets, and Monte Cristo can name the ones Andersen latched onto while forgetting himself in his jubilant frenzy. The bespectacled man threw animated gestures in the air as he spoke fondly of a place that once merely existed in the imagination of a boy from Odense.

“Galerie Vivienne is just like how I remember it. No, no, even better! It never ceases to amaze me. You saw it, too: the hustle and bustle of Parisians and tourists, all of them making their way down streets under glass roofs, rows and rows of shops full of every lustrous luxury I could never afford… And now, the very streets I saw in my lifetime are illuminated by man’s ultimate achievement! Humanity’s electrifying inventions at the turn of the twentieth century! The brilliance of what we used to see once every  _ Exposition Universelle  _ is now everywhere, all the time!”

“It takes the innocence of a child to see the world through your eyes. It’s not something I — no, it’s a joy this shadow of spite is far beyond experiencing firsthand, but…" Monte Cristo hummed as he shoved his hands into his pocket. “Watching you like this, I won’t say it’s unpleasant. If only Tesla and Edison were here to listen to your praises.”

Andersen’s gestures grew violent. “Call the zoo and there will certainly be no tiger burning bright tonight! Or tomorrow. We have tickets to a ballet at the Palais Garnier and I won't miss it for another wrestling match or whatever it is Americans do on Thursdays. You want to go to the Palais Garnier, don’t you? Everyone wants to go to the Palais Garnier.”

The count did want to go to the Palais Garnier. “Ha! The struggles of pioneers are how humanity propels itself forward, but with regard to Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, you and I both already know history's ultimate victor. A tired argument needs no spectator.”

To Monte Cristo, who reveled in hearing tales of greed and retribution, even the petty squabbles between the two inventors had run their novelty to the ground.

“You're an alternating current yourself,” the count continued, “although I'm not always sure if I prefer it.”

“Well! This is what you have to deal with, Count. Contrary to that lion's claims, being direct will be the death of me! And what a slow and painful one it would be. First will come the anxiety, and then anxiety about the anxiety. I would rather have something pleasant take me quickly, whisking me off into the quiet of the night before I even realize I'm gone. But I understand that is far too much to ask of you or an electrical current, alternating or otherwise!”

The count decided against pointing out how bright the sun was shining, and that death was perhaps not a topic to be discussed at half past ten in the morning. Did Andersen truly want to die by his hand? All of Europe should know what that was like. But rather than contemplate this further, the count smoothed over whatever openings Andersen had given him. Their presence alone was enough to prompt a sound and tug his mouth into something that resembled amusement, recognition, and perhaps—

“Fortune must be smiling upon you today, Hans Christian Andersen. You are in the city of your dreams, and the specter of vengeance that once raged at the heart of it so happens to be in a mood to humor you.”

“As if you ever stopped.” Raging or humoring him, Andersen didn’t specify. “And I never said it was the city of my  _dreams _ . That would imply that it is perfect, and you and I both know there is nothing perfect in this world. Even Napoleon—!”

Before Andersen could finish his thought, Monte Cristo grabbed him by the wrist and held him still.

They were at the corner of an intersection, and a car zoomed past them before they could blink. If Andersen had taken another step, it would have almost slammed his gangly frame into a pile of bones. The count let go as soon as it was safe to cross — he should never hold on for too long, he knows — but it took more than a moment for a flustered Andersen to regain his bearings.

“My apologies.” Whether he meant it for the carelessness of his feet or his mouth, Andersen didn’t specify, either. “Paris puts me at too much ease.”

“It seems that for you, Andersen, walking the streets of Paris should be an exercise in caution,” Monte Cristo said as if he didn’t follow Andersen’s every move. Some considered Andersen reckless by nature, and to some extent they would be correct. “Watch yourself. This isn’t the city you know.”

“Oh? And what do you know about what I know?” Andersen shot back as if he was caught off-guard, trying to redirect his own attention from an embarrassing thought. While he appeared to edit his last sentence in his head, they continued to walk.

“You never wrote of Paris,” Monte Cristo replied. “Not in a way that made your thoughts easy to find.”

Letters, novels, autobiographies — Andersen compiled his notable travels in neat, hefty travelogues, but he scattered his thoughts on the so-called city of cities throughout the rest of his works. Monte Cristo had no reason to search for his opinion on Paris. It was only a pattern that only grew more apparent as he spent his days in the library of the Wandering Sea.

Andersen understood this, and grew quiet.

“As Anne Frank wrote the first volume of her diary,” he began, “she edited passages she thought too personal or mundane for public consumption, and so would the succeeding editor that was her father.”

Monte Cristo snorted. “Are you saying you’ve completely scrubbed your scent off your publications?”

“I wish I could! Even if I were to wash my stories — scrub them all morning and use the most perfumed of fabric softeners — at the end of the day, it’s still my goddamn laundry! What I’m saying is it’s embarrassing. There is nothing I can safely write about Paris without equating it to an entry in a diary. Nothing I would write in another trivial travelogue or narcissistic biography. Even if us authors love to talk about ourselves, some of us hate ourselves even more. And yet—”

“And yet,” interrupted the count, “I know.”

The sun hung high in the morning sky, and the shadows of buildings in that cozy intersection converged over them as they stood between bookshops and boulangeries.

“The knowledge and experience you gathered in Paris were neither new material nor plain observation. They served as a point of comparison.” The count looked at the stark lines the shade drew across the pavement. “And inspiration.”

“It’s a city of culture.” Andersen turned away. “A busy city. A city of minds, of — of song, of faces.”

“Of romance.”

Andersen froze. Monte Cristo huffed.

“In the doctor’s strictest definition of the word, of course.”

“It was nothing I’d ever seen before.” Andersen gazed upward, watching the light hit the buildings the way they did a century ago. “I once knew a boy, you know. He was from the country. His father sought glory in the Grand Armée, and the boy, well… Perhaps he sought the same. He wished to go to Paris one day, thinking things could be different.”

“I’m familiar with the feeling.”

“He soon found an opportunity. A friend translated an early work of his into French, you see.”

“The dying child, unaware of their fate.”

Andersen drew in a breath through his teeth. “Yes, but I was trying to avoid so many aspects about the topic before you so gracefully careened our train of conversation right into it.”

The count smirked. “There is beauty in simplicity, my friend. Though I suppose simplicity is also relative, as is the human beauty I so admire.”

“I thought you were beyond love and hate?”

“Are you going to talk about yourself or will we have to do whatever it is Americans do on Thursdays?”

“As I was saying,” Andersen continued, “This friend, he took me to Paris. There, I met all sorts of people. I met the kindest, most gracious, most—”

As Andersen said this, he met the count’s hard, piercing gaze, and in a rare moment of prudence, pulled back.

“Well, it doesn’t matter who I met.”

“It truly doesn’t matter at all,” the count said coolly. “You were _le bon, amiable Poet danois_.”

“Don’t be jealous,” Andersen quipped, though there was little he did to hide the pink of his ears. “I met countless someones. I felt like  _ I  _ was someone. Like—”

“Like royalty.”

“No. Shut up. Like  _ someone_. Not a monkey at a typewriter. Not a jester at the royal court. Not, not—”

“Otto Thostrup?”

At the sound of the name, Andersen’s face filled with a brighter, indignant color.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” He stormed further down the street and into the shade, then strode back to shove a finger at the count’s chest. “Did Abbe Faria help you unlock the secrets of eidetic memory, too? Or is it a habit of yours to spout trivia to the annoyance of everyone around you?”

Monte Cristo gently pushed Andersen’s hand away. “I'm afraid that would be  _ yours_. And even if he did, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the title of your novel.”

“Even if it is, you don’t have to remember it!”

It was an early, obscure work Monte Cristo plucked out between untouched shelves. The story was nothing to write home about, but its titular character and its author were alike in every way. They fell in love with someone unattainable. They shared a past with someplace undesirable. They wanted to change. They wanted to run away.

“Is that all he is to you, Andersen? A character you can cast aside once he's served his purpose?”

“It is a forgettable book. An embarrassing tale.”

“But it served its purpose.”

Yet even as its antagonists met a terrible fate, there were some things its hero couldn’t escape.

“Otto found love despite all odds, but he couldn’t erase the brand on his shoulder: two letters forming an indelible mark that mars his past.”

“O.T.” Andersen said before Monte Cristo could utter the name: “Odense Tugthus.”

“Odense Prison. And yet—”

“And yet he was happy. Yes, I know. A bright girl and a poor boy fall in love and live happily ever after. So it was a self-indulgent work of mine! One full of dreams and naïveté I should have locked in the attic of my mind. You don’t need to know the Solar System to figure that out. I’m sure Sherlock Holmes would be very proud of you. Did you want a sequel?”

“No,” Monte Cristo said tiredly.

“Good,” Andersen replied, who now held the responsibility of filling the awkward silence. “You said it yourself, didn't you? There's beauty in simplicity.”

“Indeed,” the count agreed. “At times it is an axiom we take to extremes.”

Hacking at a character until they become a caricature. Rejecting everything to preserve their purest form. Keeping a conversation straightforward.

“Anyway, why are we talking about this now?” Andersen asked. “Perhaps if we were at another time and place, we could philosophize to the sounds of jazz and labor strikes until the break of dawn. But we are in Paris on a deadline! I understand your reluctance to reminisce, but we have no time to waste. I came here to procrastinate! To take in the sights! To—”

“To indulge in your nostalgia?”

“To experience something I've never known before!”

Andersen blurted out the words before he could rein himself in, out of breath and red in the face.

Monte Cristo stopped in his tracks.

“Let us forgo the Palais-Royal,” he said after letting the moment pass. “It bores me.”

“What? We’re already here! The garden is right  _ there,  _ we just have to find the entrance—”

“Silence!” Monte Cristo rasped, his flames engulfing him in the second it takes him to breathe. “I’ve followed your whims long enough.”

“Oh,  _ silence_, is it! Listen here, you nouveau riche edgelord, I don’t care if my walking tour bores you to tears. I am a fairly accomplished—what are you doing! Put me down!”

Andersen couldn’t say much after that. He was too busy dangling from the count’s shoulder and screaming at the sudden shift in altitude. After grabbing Andersen without even the slightest warning, Monte Cristo leapt onto a nearby building and began bounding across rooftops as he made his way to the next arrondissement over. He could smell more smoke than he remembered, but when the count traveled like this, the Parisian air had never been clearer.

When Andersen felt his feet flat on the solid ground, he opened his eyes to the morning sun over the metropolis. 

Once again, Monte Cristo let go.

“Haydée and I stayed over there,” the count spoke as he approached the western edge of the roof. “Along the Champs-Elysées.”

Andersen scrambled toward the count and peered over the ledge to see the familiar box trim of the trees that lined the avenue. He was quiet as his gaze followed the avenues and how they merged at where they stood, the thumb-sized cars and people and everything that brought the city to life. Monte Cristo thought that perhaps Andersen saw something fanciful about it.

And then Andersen spoke.

“Tell me where we are or I'll murder you like a musketeer.”

“We are at the Arc de Triomphe,” announced Monte Cristo as he nodded toward the horizon. “In the time we were alive, all of this was the Paris we knew. And now, it is the only Paris I can give you.”

“Give me?” The words trembled in Andersen’s throat.

“Does it bore you?” The count hummed in thought. “Perhaps the Eiffel Tower had more of that romance you long for.”

“Would you stop? The last time I stood on top of anything in this city was on a barrel to see the king. As far as I’m concerned, this is better.” Andersen’s ears burned as he looked toward the horizon. “This is enough.”

Monte Cristo studied Andersen’s profile and how his lips parted against the blue sky — a sky clear of all the scars and scales his readers drew on his skin. He saw this and wondered what it would take to erase them. He saw this and it seemed as if the city already did. Was this why Andersen wanted to go to Paris? Was this Andersen’s escape?

Was it his?

Monte Cristo tore his gaze away from the author.

“Paris changes people,” he said. “You said so yourself. Your countrymen would come to the city of cities to make something of themselves. Ghosts like me could never change, but at the very least, I thought the view would stir your emotions.”

“Is that why we’re here, Dantes? To stir my emotions?”

The count’s shoulders tensed at the name. A sharp inhale, a turn on his heel, and he walked away.

“What’s wrong?” asked Andersen. “Aren’t you going to bite me?”

“You  _ test _ me,” the count hissed. “You know I left that name a long time ago.”

“Come now, Count. We both know what you want.”

Monte Cristo ripped the words from his throat.

“I want blood! Retribution!” Flames of black and blue covered Monte Cristo from head to toe, burning with intensity as if to shield him from the brutal truth. “I only exist to extinguish all that is evil in this world. A merciless creature of the night, never to step into the light. That is all I am. I deserve nothing!”

Anyone would have cowered in fear at this fearsome display of power, but to Andersen, it was a Thursday. He shook his head and sighed in exasperation, but also in relief. Monte Cristo put others through worse.

“Romance, indeed,” Andersen muttered. “Well, why this, then?” He waved his hand vaguely at the most famous avenue in the world. “You take me to a scenic spot smack dab in the middle of Paris and expect me to say nothing about it?”

A gesture made on a monument built in Napoleon’s name — the irony isn’t lost on Monte Cristo. The flames dwindled until they were nothing but a spark in the count's eyes.

“This city is capable of things no demon could ever do. I am only helping it give you what it can.”

“There’s nothing I want in Paris. They can light this city up in any way they wish, but it can't give me a hap—” Andersen bit his lip. “It can't give me what I want.” 

The count made a difficult face. “Then why go here at all? You were so eager in the control room.”

Andersen leaned back and smirked in turn. “Watching me, weren't you, Dantes?”

“You were whining like a petulant child. I had no choice.”

“Hah! Don’t act as if I’ve wounded your ego. You’ve plenty of that, don’t you?”

Andersen’s smirk widened into a grin, and for a second, Monte Cristo forgot how to breathe. Unable to quell the quick beating in his chest, the count pretended to be interested in the Eiffel Tower.

“I have no reason to exchange words with you on the matter.”

The confident Andersen laughed. “I was planning to do this after the show, but now that it's come to this, you've forced my hand. I hope you're happy!”

From inside his oversized jacket, Andersen brandished a sealed envelope. No wax, no seals — nothing a French nobleman would use. It was a plain letter from a man who was, to Monte Cristo, everything but.

“I wrote everything I wanted to say here, but now that I am revealing its contents in a place far more fantastic than I’d planned, I feel very stupid for it.” He shook the envelope in front of him. “Well, go on!”

Monte Cristo took the envelope and looked at it.

“Should I read it now?”

“Burn it, sell it, turn it into mana prisms, I don't care. It's all the same to me.”

“Then I shall open it. You seem impatient, so I might as well put you out of your misery—”

“I love you.”

Suddenly, the sounds of birds taking flight were louder than any word they had ever spoken. Words he never thought he'd hear. Words he never thought he'd deserve. He parted his lips. The envelope stayed shut. The sun shone on them as Andersen’s blue gaze bore into Monte Cristo’s soul, and it was like all his scars had opened so sweetly. He wanted Andersen to sew them back desperately.

“You wanted a simple confession, didn't you?” Andersen said as he closed the distance between them. “I'll have you know I don't take just anybody on the Hans Christian Andersen walking tour.”

Monte Cristo tucked the letter in his coat. “I thought you wanted a new experience.”

“You idiot, this  _ is _ the experience. Do you think I’d do this if I didn’t know your answer?”

“Yes, we all know you’re a virgin,” the count shot back. “But having the ability to observe doesn't mean you  _ should_.”

“Edmond Dantes, I am dying,” Andersen declared, anxiety be damned. “Kindly deliver the finishing blow before I shit all over the floor.”

Monte Cristo grit his teeth. Tightened his hands into fists. Tried to think of anger and injustice and hate, hate, hate.

But there was also pain.

And there, too, was the man who soothed it.

“I… am no longer human.”

“That won’t stop me.”

“You would die by my hand?”

“I’ve made that very clear.”

“And why is that?”

“Because then I will have experienced something new. To be more accurate, I am about to.”

Monte Cristo made a sound like laughter. “You're so sure of yourself.”

“Oh, for God's sake, Dantes. I can only play Prince Charming for so long.”

“Patience,” said the count, the word soft in his eyes and warm in his chest. “Were you not the one who said you wished to go gentle into the night?”

Andersen’s eyes widened, then looked away. “I know it’s too much to ask.”

Monte Cristo lifted Andersen’s chin, and from where he stood, he could already hear it: the soft gasp of his lips, the heart beating against his breast. “You deserve something simpler. Not this broken thing, this wretched soul—”

“Don’t put me on a pedestal. It’s unflattering,” Andersen snapped, the terseness betrayed by the shudder of his breath. “And you’re not broken. You still reach out. You hope.” He snorted and shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t know what you see in me. I’m just a clown of a writer, chained to his desk. I’m cowardly and pathetic.”

“That’s not true,” Monte Cristo whispered as brushed the hair out of Andersen’s eyes, his gloved fingers tracing the shape of his jaw. “You open your heart.”

His thumb brushed over the parting of his mouth.

“You let me in.”

The first touch of their lips was with closed eyes and tender skin, unraveling, unwinding the hate, hate, and hate was hopeless in the face of the warmth that danced with his flames, not smothering them, but holding them close and telling them it will be here despite it all.

Andersen gasped, “Paris is the city of cities,” and Edmond Dantes kissed him again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually know how to write Dantes, I have not read the Count of Monte Cristo in full, nor am I an expert on anything French or 19th century Europe, so I apologize for anything that sounds off.
> 
> Andersen stayed at the Hotel Vivienne when he was there one time. Yes, Andersen met Dumas and that was an actual thing Dumas said about him.
> 
> [The poem Dantes talks about](https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/detdoendebarn/index_e.html) and [the novel, O.T.](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7513) I personally think his short stories are better, but you can see a bit about what Andersen thinks about France and Paris in it.
> 
> [Follow me on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/erythean)


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